2011–12 UEFA Champions League group stage

The group stage featured 32 teams: the 22 automatic qualifiers and the 10 winners of the play-off round (five through the Champions Route, five through the League Route).[1]

The teams were drawn into eight groups of four, and played each other home-and-away in a round-robin format. The matchdays were 13–14 September, 27–28 September, 18–19 October, 1–2 November, 22–23 November, and 6–7 December 2011.[2]

Teams were seeded into four pots[5] based on their 2011 UEFA club coefficients.[6] The title holders, Barcelona, were automatically seeded into Pot 1. Pot 1 held teams ranked 1–9, Pot 2 held teams ranked 10–24, Pot 3 held teams ranked 31–83, while Pot 4 held teams ranked 86–200 and unranked teams.

For the group stage draw, teams from the same national association cannot be drawn against each other. Moreover, the draw was controlled for teams from the same association in order to split the teams evenly into the two sets of groups (A–D, E–H) for maximum television coverage.

The fixtures were decided after the draw. On each matchday, four groups played their matches on Tuesday, while the other four groups played their matches on Wednesday, with the two sets of groups (A–D, E–H) alternating between each matchday. There are other restrictions, e.g., teams from the same city (e.g. Milan and Internazionale, which also share a stadium) do not play at home on the same matchday (UEFA tries to avoid teams from the same city playing at home on the same day or on consecutive days), and Russian teams do not play at home on the last matchday due to cold weather.